Report on ArchiCAD Winter School 2003

18-25 January, 2003. Daytime was for Skiing and Snowboarding.
ArchiCAD sessions were evening classes on selected themes.

The Winter school went very well, many good friendships were made. The academic program went very well, we made good use of the very talented people we had here and took a bit of a risk by allowing delegates to vote for favourite subjects and speaking on the subject at short notice. Even the snow improved during the week.

Sunday ArchiCAD 8.0 overview

Skiing: Sunday was hot and sunny and we could ski in light clothing in perfect conditions. But the warm weather was causing the piste to get thinner and to expose tree roots and a few rocks on steeper parts where there was too much sun, or skiers were scraping.

Evening: was skiing under floodlights till 9, then after the break it was Adrian Harms of Bite doing a comprehensive run through of new features of ArchiCAD 8, including Navigator, solid operations modelling and other new features.

Monday Rendering and modelling

Skiing: the alpine sunshine was so good that we had to ski in light clothing and stay on shaded slopes for the best piste quality. Far below us, lowland Austria was sheathed with low white cloud.

Evening: the main session was Ildiko Szabo of Abvent doing a run through of the more interesting features of Artlantis 4.5 and AVWorks (because most of the audience know previous Artlantis, she could go straight to the interesting bits).
After the Beer Break, we had a Sketchup tutorial by Matthew Lohden and a Zoom GDL tutorial by Ildiko and Andreas Lettner (the topics having being chosen by a vote of the delegates).
There was also a small group doing ArchiCAD for beginners in German with Reinhard Brandstetter.

Tuesday GDL night

Skiiing: was similar to Tuesday with the piste getting thinner, but then clouds gathering in the evening promised some good new snow.

Evening: was GDL night, with presentations from David Nicholson-Cole about GDL teaching at Nottingham University (an official taught module visible at http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/sbe/projects/) and the On-Line Cookbook, a current growing project visible at http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/sbe/cookbook/ ). This is expected to be available in German and Spanish in the next few months.
Matthew Lohden demonstrated his developed sophisticated libraries of 2D objects for marking and framing drawings.

After the Beer Break, the conference worked in several groups, with Matthew and DNC doing a more advanced GDL workshop looking at Smartness attributes, Texture mapping, Lights and animation (the delegates voted on these topics from a list of about 30 possible GDL topics), and Adrian Harms with Bert Nijs doing GDL without GDL (Object making) and GDL for beginners.
There were also 2 parallel German language workshops on GDL.

Wednesday Serious professional stuff

Skiing: Snow was back at last in plentiful quantities and although there is a risk of scraping new snow back to the earth, many of the pistes were now usable and the snow was 'sticking' well.

Evening: was "serious professional stuff" evening, and the plenary was Matthew Lohden talking about professional practice standards, using his experience with East Coast US practices as an example - the primary message being that you dont want to spend your time tweaking working practices (and letting your staff modify them) when your main task is to develop good architecture. This set many people thinking about the standards in their own countries. Matthew has generated a short souvenir document for this which will be distributed to delegates.

After the Beer Break, The Tabletalks were provided by Adrian Harms showing the use of the Layout Book in Plotmaker 3 until closing time, and there was a German/Norwegian group led by Herbert Peter and Andreas Lettner on Practice Standards (including how to use QuickViews and layer combinations) Consultants´drawings (Import/Export-handling), and Database and Mass Calculation.
There was also a continuing small group doing 'ArchiCAD for beginners'.

Thursday Interesting stuff

Skiing: More snow overnight, so the pistes were even better, although the visibility worsened later in the afternoon when the cloud base moved. This made the skiing interesting, if slow.

Evening: we started with a talk about Navisworks by Adrian Harms, showing us recent projects for Nottingham and elsewhere done by Bite using Navisworks. This was followed by Gerald Faustenhammer on ArchiPhysiks, a remarkable add on to ArchiCAD that calculates aspects of thermal performance of buildings, including the uvalues, heating loads for rooms, effect of orientation on windows and surfaces, heat gains from electrical fittings, all related to database info on the site and its altitude - and wraps the whole thing up in a form acceptable to local authorities for building regulation submissions. Although it is presently Austrian, it may go a long way if translated. Herbert Peter showed ArchiFacade from Cigraph as an appetiser for the tabletalk to follow.

After the Beer Break, we had two main workshops, one in Flash and Website authoring for architects by David Nicholson-Cole, Robert Luck and Tom Pickford, and the other in Photoshop (digital bitmap manipulation) for architects with Adrian Harms, and the use of CiGraph Addons with Herbert Peter. The Flash workshop went a long way, from a basic introduction, through timeline animation, morphing, trace bitmaps, layers and buttons, to some quite complex stuff like displaced images (from buttons) and making a preloader.
There was also a continuing small group doing 'ArchiCAD for beginners'.

Friday Tips and Tricks and Delegate contributions

Skiing: with more snow overnight, and a light amount still falling, the surface was again very interesting and the skiing experience on the chair lift run was "as good as it gets" according to one of the experienced skiers. The long ride back in the chair lift was cold unless you had worked up a good body heat on the long run down.

Evening: The Theme was Variety, so there were twelve presentations during the evening, some from delegates who had not previously presented.

• Herbert Peter: started with a history of ArchiCAD from the earliest days - Gabor's piping project, and the development of ArchiCAD 1.0 and later versions. This is an extract from his book on ArchiCAD which is available in German and will be in English later this year.
• David Nicholson-Cole: Showed some of the work of the Nottingham students in his Fast Track ArchiCAD teaching project, in 2001 and 2002, and in a Photoshop learning project. He also showed some of the work of the students of Lubomir Kulisev from Vienna, Graz and Sydney, (who is currently rewriting the training guide for ArchiCAD 8.0 and couldn't be present for Friday evening).
• Gerald Faustenhammer: showed some GDL work developed by A-Null of Vienna, including some useful objects that represent constructional solutions and show in 3D representations of condensation risk.
• Adrian Harms: showed a demonstration of DXF transfer (in 8.0) and also some Flash / VR work in the environment of Nottingham.
• Phil Tait: Archwise, from the Newcastle region, specialise in envelope and structural design and in the process of getting buildings built. Phil presented their increasing use of ArchiCAD and GDL to achieve this.
• Uwe Hillekamp and Georg Weber: are partners in their small practice, but have some very interesting Retail work in GDL, and have a reputation for some very cool modern design in houses and house conversion. They also do a lot of autoscripted GDL objects and demonstrated a neat trick with Excel for tidying up the scripts.
• Students of Nottingham University: Krishan Pattni, Tom Pickford, Robert Luck and Simon Mok have recently worked on individual designs of a 40 storey high rise 'City in the Sky' for London. They have modelled the entire square mile of Central London in ArchiCAD, and extended the model with less detail down to the Thames - including St Pauls and Towerbridge. Their individual buildings were sited on the Heron square site, and had been entirely modelled in ArchiCAD, with Artlantis and GDL. (see http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/sbe/ and then find the Student Projects page.
• David Nicholson-Cole: showed an example of some recent Oak framing components in GDL as an example of UI development - and then 'the Yacht' (that was shown in April 2002) as a example of UI, but mainly, of using Material definitions using Pen colours and the Request statement in GDL.
• Matthew Lohden: showed a further use of the REQUEST statement in GDL, enabling the user to label objects without having to open the settings box. We also discussed how to autoscale fonts.
• Jorn Lovland: from Norway, showed some of his domestic work in Norway, mostly timber framed houses. We also saw some photos of Norway, and would have liked to see more if it wasnt already nearly midnight.
• Geert Suykens: showed some impressive interior renderings, using Artlantis.
• David Nicholson-Cole: closed with a reminder of the forthcoming ArchiCAD University Summer School in Nottingham 3-4-5-6 September 2003 (showing some pictures of ACUE 2002) and hoping that everyone would return to the next ACUE Winter School at Feuerkogel in the same week in 2004 - and thanked everyone for their participation. This little address was delivered while in the background played a hilarious video of Tom Plackett using more of his bottom than his skis to find his way down the Steinkogel red run.